The fabrication work on the front of the car is almost complete at this point. The seam welding, rust repair, and gussetting is done, and the wheel wells have been clearanced for additional steering angle. There will be tubing added for bracing and to support the radiator and bodywork. I should have all the tubing for the build shortly, so I will be able to finish up the front, seam weld a few places on the interior, and start work on the cage.

Now that the season is over for me, it’s time to start building a new chassis to compete with next year in Formula D. I picked up another S13 hatch last weekend, got it stripped down and started work on the front of the car.

I put together a new FPR setup because the stock Corvette filter/regulator always fluctuated a few psi on pressure and is more expensive to change than the Aeromotive filter cartridges.

Cleaned up the transmission and installed new slave.

Disassembled and cleaned the Accusump to check for any wear on the piston or cylinder. Everything looked good. I filled it with two quarts of oil when I assembled it, so that should make it easy to prime the engine before first start.

Swapping the LS1 parts onto the LS3.

As it sits now.

I have a few more things to put on there and have to do some wiring. Hopefully I’ll be trying to start it in a week or two.

Since last update, I’ve pretty much finished everything on the car except for the motor. I’ve been doing a lot more research on the motor situation getting ready to order everything. After thinking about it a lot, I decided to get the GMPP controller kit for the LS3 and just do it DBW. I thought about all the pros/cons and decided this was the easiest/cheapest/least retarded way of installing this motor as compared to using the LS1 stuff or going standalone. The Lingenfelter converter box, 90mm cable throttle body, and all the harness conversion stuff really adds up when doing the LS1 PCM route. In addition, I would have to get a wideband to tune it, etc., so it’s actually more money than the controller. Also more work doing all the harness conversion, installing the wideband, and actually having to tune it. Anyway, going to finalize my parts list and order everything this week.

Putting the front suspension on:

Got sway bars and put the back on, need to get the motor in to decide on final spacer thickness for the front.

Painted the rest of the crap that needed to be painted, including fenders, bumper, and headlight parts.

As it sits now:

Decided to convert the front lower control arms to use rod ends on the inner pivot. Bushings bind everything up when trying to get a lot of caster. Also, I wanted to be able to make the control arm longer, which would let me reduce the size of the spacer on the front, reduce scrub radius, etc. Still waiting for the rod ends to be delivered, but started working on the new control arms:

The back is done, and now there’s the front. Not going to do much here, just make decent fender and headlight mounts to get everything in the right place, new fenders and hood, do a bit more stitch welding and bracing in places, and just general cleanup.

Bought a non-crashed, non-bent, non-rusty pile of crap subframe, cleaned it up, and installed new bushings.

Replaced my lower control arms which had been bent and hammered straight a few times and installed Energy Suspension bushings.

I thought it would be interesting to see how square the chassis is at this point. I put bolts through the front and rear lower control arm mounts and and dropped a plumb bob from those. It was exactly square (+/- 1/32″), which was shocking. I’m sure it could be bent in other ways, but I think this is the most important type of measurement. So this is good to know.

So just cleaning up the rear suspension now and putting everything back on. My diff output shafts are kind of wobbly now. You can move them up and down like 1/16″ and in/out about 1/16. What is wrong with it? Does it need new bearings? The one and only time I’ve ever opened a diff is when I installed the LSD 2 years ago, so I don’t know. Help.